A new year has settled over the tract homes and shopping plazas of Honey Hollow, a year
unblemished by the messy uncertainties of its precedent. Although snow still blankets winterized
lawns, and icicles continue to grow in thick stalks from gleaming aluminum gutters, the residents
of Honey Hollow are glutted with a springtime sense of optimism, resurrection, purification.
They lay sleeping between flannel sheets dreaming easy of car washes, polite interchanges at
breakfast benefits, soft-serve ice cream, silent auctions, new vinyl siding, throw pillows, Easter,
carnations, Best Western hotels, raffle tickets, vacation resorts, Hershey®’s milk chocolate
bars, and early retirement. In a master bedroom in White Terrace, a husband tightens his grip on
his pretty wife, who in turn curls closer into his embrace. The homes are warm, the people
happy. Their thoughts are clouded by neither anxiety nor fear; no grey skies obscure their vision
of the broad bright field of the future tidily unfolding itself into infinity, like a crisp linen
tablecloth.
It is now Monday morning, 2 am. In 5 hours, the workweek will begin. The men will rise from
their beds and stagger down the stairs to drink coffee and orange juice and eat 2 full bowls of
Cheerios. They will drive their silver//champagne//black 4-door luxury sedans to their offices,
where they will sit down at their desks, twirl pens between thumb and forefinger and think about
meatloaf for 7 hours. Back at home, their wives will begin to stir. They will moisturize and shave
their legs. Any children will be packed onto the school bus and given money for the hot lunch
line. After a few hours of morning talk shows, it will be time to drive (the minivan, the Subaru
station wagon) over to the SuperFood to do the shopping for the evening's meatloaf.
At 2 am, the SuperFood's doors are locked, its fluorescent lights dimmed. The store will not
open for another five hours, when the first shift of cashiers and customer service representatives
will pull into the parking lot already wearing their black SuperFood aprons and blue polo
shirts.
At this darkened hour, the SuperFood is empty. The parking lot is empty, and so are the streets.
The streetlights, tireless, continue to cycle through their color-coded progression, their
machinations lonesome without the usual soundtrack of idling engines and audience of impatient
vehicles. Throughout Honey Hollow, cars and their people are silent, sleeping. And yet, inside
the overlarge warehouse-like interior of the SuperFood, there seems to be some presence,